RECIPE: ROAST CHICKEN & VEGGIES

A lot of the time I don't post recipes on my blog because they mostly consist of crap...err, foodstuffs, I kind of just throw together. This isn't going to be an exception but I thought I'd do a full out post of what I usually make myself for lunch, considering it's almost the exact same thing I've been eating for three weeks now.

It all starts with organic chicken drumsticks. It's not really my chicken part of choice but buying and cutting up and then freezing and defrosting a whole chicken isn't really my thang, so I usually go with chicken drumsticks because it's usually that, or a whole chicken at the local grocery store. My thang about touching a whole raw chicken is that it reminds me of holding a baby. I mean, have you ever grabbed a chicken right under it's wings, like where you would pick up a baby from its...uhhh...armpits (I guess)? It's kind of creepy! And the raw chicken is kind of like a baby...it's the same size, weight, a little smooth and wet and stuff. It totally grosses me out. The first time I ever held a chicken like that it totally reminded me of holding a baby and then I couldn't deal with the chicken any longer.

Anyhoo, for today's menu (which ended up being lunch for three consecutive days), I made roast drumsticks and veggies. My choice of veggies are usually the same with some mix-ins, depending on what's in the fridge or what I have a craving for, if I can get a hold of my dad before he's been to the grocery store. This time I had butternut squash, zucchini, mushrooms and broccoli. Normally I have sweet potatoes in place of the butternut squash but I had asked my parents to pick up the squash for me and not remembering the original reason I wanted it, I figured roasting it would be a good idea. So into the oven it went...

Dom's Usual Roast Chicken & Veggies
Ingredients:
- Mix of veggies...in this case I used one medium butternut squash, one head of broccoli, 10 or so medium mushrooms and two small zucchinis
- 3 organic chicken drumsticks
- extra virgin olive oil
- Mrs. Dash garlic and herb seasoning
- salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Prep veggies. I peeled the butternut squash and trimmed the broccoli. Cut the squashes into medium chunks...I'd say around 1.5" square-ish. I left the mushrooms whole and cut the broccoli into large florets since they roast faster. Once prepped, dump into a large bowl.
   
2. Coat veggies and chicken in olive oil. Coat well. You want everything to kind of glisten with oil--especially the broccoli so it doesn't burn and get all black and crusty.
3. Season with Mrs. Dash, salt and pepper. My Mrs. Dash doesn't contain salt so it would be wise to add your own. Season well. Plain roasted chicken tastes bland and boring. No one wants boring chicken. Boring chicken, boring life--just ask the Slap Chop guy.
4. Dump everything into an oven-proof baking pan lined with foil. Lining things with foil makes for easy clean-up and doesn't ruin your baking pan. I like it.
5. This is what everything should look like before you stick it into the oven:
6. Roast at 350F for 35 minutes, then broil for 4.5 minutes so that the chicken skin gets brown and crispy. I love crispy chicken skin and because it's organic and kind of a luxury, I eat it up when I get the chance. You can discard it if you want.

So when you're done, everything should look similar to this:Note that this photo was taken the next morning so my chicken doesn't look as appetizing as it would if it were taken straight out of the oven. I usually portion out my meals with the chicken first (one drumstick per meal, usually lunch) and then divvy up the veggies.

For about 15 minutes of prep and 35 minutes of roasting time (in which you don't have to really do anything), you have enough food for three meals (or more if you're a light-eater, which clearly I am not when it comes to work lunches).

It's also a really great way to get in a bunch of veggies and who doesn't love roasted veggies--don't answer that! The butternut squash was a really nice change this time around. It was super sweet. Next time I think I'll make mashed butternut squash instead of potatoes when the craving hits me.

GIVE ME MEMORY!

My laptop is slowing me down. It's kind of my fault considering that my free space consists of almost 2GB. Yep, that's right...my laptop is running on only 2GB of memory. Sad, isn't it? But I'm about 96% away from burning some photos to DVD and thereby freeing up about 4GB of space. I really need an external hard drive right about now. I also need a new laptop battery but that's another story.

In other news, F man, just F. It's snowing outside and while I would normally be happy, I'm not. It's probably snowing because my birthday is later this week and the world is probably sending me snow for my birthday which I would normally be over-the-moon about, but today I feel so-so about it.

I'm in a bit of a birthday funk. I usually love my birthday. It's the one day that revolves around ME! The day that everyone says nice things to me; that everyone does nice things for me; the day that I don't have to work. This year however, this year things are different. For one thing, I have to work. I can't take the day off. I probably could have asked for it off had I not been sick for two days last week but I can't afford to take any more days off work--not anymore. Not when I'm going to need to take at least an afternoon off to get my bloody G1 all over again (that's another story entirely). I haven't worked on my birthday in oh, five years! Secondly, I'm sick--still! I don't think these meds are actually working. My throat still feels rather sore though not as sore as before though my glands are definitely hurting. It makes me really unsocial at work because I just don't want to talk to anyone.

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Food as of late hasn't been entirely interesting. I haven't really wanted to eat and on days when I have wanted to, I've been stuck with things like three-day old mushy rice noodle soup or really bland chicken broth because I think my tastebuds have malfunctioned. Here's a half-decent recap because being sick hasn't really made me want to take pics.

18th...no photos :(
I think my camera ate my photos.

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19th...Friday
Finally on day two of some antibiotics (argh, as I wanted to avoid them), I was tired of having mushy stuff to eat and decided to go all out with a bowl of Frosted Flakes and organic milk for breakfast:Not exactly the smartest idea with a throat infection but hey, I'm a rebel! I also refused to have anymore soup for lunch so instead I made myself some roast veggies and scrambled eggs:
Veggies included a couple potatoes, a sweet potato, broccoli and mushrooms. A couple hours later I was hungry again and decided to have another helping of roast veggies with an orange for some vitamin C.I can't remember what I had for dinner that night and clearly I forgot to take a pic of it but dessert was a bowl of frozen strawberries that I nuked in the micro for 45 seconds with freshly whipped cream and a couple of crushed vanilla bean meringue cookies.Yum!! This was a little bit too much dessert though so I only about 3/4 of it.

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20th...Saturday
Vacay from blogging--not really. I only had two photos: dinner and a bowl of grapes. Not very exciting so I thought I'd skip it. Plus, I spent the day just watching the Olympics so it wasn't very noteworthy.

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21st...Sunday
Breakfasts are Sunday are always kind of iffy. I either eat them or I don't. I usually attend church with my family and by the time I get myself settled it's around 11 and knowing that lunch will be in an hour, I tend to skip breakfast. Today one of those days. I just went straight to lunch:Egg noodles with slices of pork and veggies.

Dinner was steamed free-range chicken, Chinese vegetables and white basmati rice:Obviously other food was consumed throughout the day...I just neglected to take photos of it. Sometimes my mouth wants to eat more than I want to take photos.

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22nd...Monday:
I don't have a photo of first breakfast but instead will present you with a photo of second breakfast, my oatmeal. Here it is in all its glory:Instant organic oats with chia seeds, ground flaxseed, dried mulberries, cherries, coconut and walnuts. The latter was a really crappy decision on my part considering that my throat still hurt. I couldn't finish this. It was a really dumb idea since lunch wasn't until almost 5 hours later! But that's usually what my oatmeal at work looks like.

Lunch was supposed to be this:But as soon as I opened the container to snap the pic this morning, I saw all the mold. Here's a close-up if you need one:Not cool! Luckily I had a back-up for lunch:More leftovers from Mevame, which yes...are almost a week old--yikes! But no mold was present so I decided to go for it. The rest of my snacks included grapes and some dried dates:
Dinner was kind of sad because my stomach wasn't feeling well and my throat was still hurting. I just had an avocado with salt and pepper plus an apple:A little bit later I had a piece of French baguette with cream cheese and I am currently roasting some veggies for my lunch tomorrow. Stay tuned!

DAMN THE RACCOONS!

I'm behind on my food recaps! I've been hit with a bout of migraines for the past two days, plus starting my new job yesterday (!) and just feeling exhausted after staring at a computer screen for eight hours...the last thing I've wanted to do is spend more time on the computer. Plus, the raccoons kept me up all night Sunday/Monday morning so I had about five hours of on-and-off sleep before starting my new job. Let's just hope no one saw me dozing off in front of my screen because I was seriously SO tired! I even went to bed at 10 last night just to make up for lack of sleep. I don't think I've ever gone to bed that early except for when I was really sick--like when I had pneumonia five years ago.

Anyway, back to food recaps...let's try and do this quickly...Friday was spent making macarons and some other unmentioned stuff so the only thing I ate was the following at Sean's house:Take-out container of rice with Chinese dried sausage and pork with some broccoli. Unbelievably tasty but so bad for you but so good for me since it was the only thing I ate all day. Oh and Sean trimmed his beard! He looks so good now:I think we make the best couple--obviously!

Saturday's eats were a little more interesting. Spaghetti and meat sauce for lunch...Leftover wild grain rice with broccoli and beef and cucumber salad for dinner... And dessert was a Christmas-themed bowl of grapes and a clementine...
On Sunday I misplaced my camera so the only food photo I was able to take was dinner after my camera had been found:Basmati rice with roast duck and green beans.

Yesterday was my first day back to work--I make it seem like I was out of work FOREVER when it was really just three weeks--and I got up really early, sort of, to make myself a proper breakfast (sorry--it's out of focus):Two slices of rye bread with a clementine and an organic pork and blueberry sausage.

I made myself a full bento for lunch:Leftover roast duck, mini carrots, two-layered heart-shaped wild rice/white rice, green beans; clementines, grapes and blueberries and a bag of BBQ popchips for snack.

Sadly, that was not enough food. Right after saying hello to my parents as I climbed into the car (they picked me up from work yesterday), I asked if anyone had any food on hand. Unfortunately all my mom had were some walnuts, a mini chocolate candy and some hot chocolate. I passed on all of that because I wanted some real food! I couldn't believe how all that food left me hungry. I had had lunch at 12:30 and the popchips sometime around 5pm and just couldn't stop thinking about food all afternoon. I don't have a proper desk yet (I'm not sure if I'm getting one at all), so I don't know if/when I'll be able to store snacks at work.

I immediately came home and inhaled my leftover breakfast (I only managed to eat half before running out of time) and then made myself this snack:an orange and some blueberries while I roasted a whole bunch of veggies:Zucchini, sweet potato, white potato, carrots, mushrooms and a red pepper. I was lazy and just threw everything into the oven at the same time, which wasn't a great idea. Dinner was had a little less than an hour later (again, I should have checked this earlier):Just a small plate of roast veggies since I was kind of full from my mish-mash of other food.

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And now onto today's eats...sadly I only have one photo from my lunch:
I had roast veggies that I had made the night before, an omelet with tomatoes and onions and as snacks I had blueberries, mini carrots, radish slices and a small block of cream cheese, as well as Ryvita crackers which are unpictured.

EMPLOYED ONCE AGAIN!

I just signed my new employment contract this morning--wahoo! To be honest, I was getting a little disheartened about the whole job seeking thing--feeling like I was never going to be able to find a job given all the positions I applied for--but on the afternoon of feeling this way, I got a call from my future employer and guess what, I'm now employed! I start on Monday and while I don't want to give away to many details, I'm just really excited about my new position. It's something completely new and thefore, really exciting but at the same time a little bit scary because as I mentioned before, it's completely not within my field, but the work I'll be doing is completely within my range. Woo hooooooooo!

And moving onto the food photos...I opted for a small breakfast...just a banana blueberry muffin with whole wheat flour:
Then after puttering about the kitchen with my dad for quite some time, I decided on some roast veggies for lunch. Here they are all laid out on the baking sheet. We have a sweet potato, white potato, two carrots, a big red onion and a couple heads of garlic.Everything was covered in olive oil, salt, pepper and dried thyme and then roasted for an hour at 350F. For the first 40 minutes I had the above in the oven while the following waited outside:White button mushrooms, with the same seasonings, waiting to be added to the baking sheet. Mmm...roasted mushrooms!

Once the veggies were about 15 minutes away from being done, I realized that I needed something to bulk up my lunch a little bit so I decided to start cooking some wild mixed-grain rice. But once the veggies were done and the rice wasn't, my stomach started nagging at me so I had this in the meanwhile:A Ryvita cracker topped with cream cheese, a couple cloves of roasted garlic smooshed and I topped that off with the sliced cucumbers above. Yummy!!

Finally, an hour and a half after the whole process began, this was my lunch:And then dinner ended up being a LARGE BOWL OF PHO because I am totally crazy and thought that this tiny body could handle a large bowl of pho while Sean ordered a small bowl of pho. Jeebs, what was I thinking? Well, honestly, I was eating sometime afte 2:30 in the afternoon and hadn't eaten anything since then and I was really hungry and thought that my stomach could handle it. And well, to tell you the truth, I took that bowl of pho to town! I did the best I could...this time trying not to slurp up as much soup as I normally do and focusing more on the rice noodles themselves. I managed to finish my noodles but left some of the thinly-sliced beef and beef brisket behind. Sigh...I would have let my dad down.

Anyway, after waddling out of the pho restaurant and heading downtown to (finally) catch Dinosaur Jr. in concert, I told Sean to remind me about this very evening should I ever decide to order another large bowl of pho. EVER! No matter how hungry I say I am.

The End.

PS: The show was awesome!

Money spent: $19+ (pho for two with drinks)